As nationalist movements rise in the United States, England, France and elsewhere, much has been made of the failures of the global left. In particular, the global left has had to grapple with questions related to “identity politics” (which, really, are just questions of politics). For example: has focusing on the very real difficulties of gender discrimination blinded them to the equally real and legitimate questions of economic inequality? This is the very same conundrum that former U.S. Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders brought up in a recent event in Boston.

“In other words, one of the struggles you’re going to see in the Democratic Party is whether we go beyond identity politics,” Sen. Sanders said. But there is no “beyond” identity politics. People rarely go “beyond” their identities; even if they wish to change identities, the rest of the world exerts enormous pressure to keep their old identity in place. People who identify as multiracial frequently have non-whiteness imposed upon them by police officers, security guards and others. People who identify as trans or non-binary are constantly misgendered. We cannot leave identity politics behind any more than we can leave identity behind.

Moreover, what is called for at the present moment is not a rejection of identity politics, but a deepening of relationships across multiple identities. Many on the global left have pleaded for greater intersectionality in their politics and organization: a recognition that people inhabit multiple identities and can find common cause at the intersection of those identities.

The term was first coined in 1989, by scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw. Crenshaw posed the idea that systems of identity and systems of oppression don’t work independently or in a vacuum. Rather, they are connected as in a web, and those connections have influence and sway over each other. For example: the same systems that uphold a racist practice such as redlining (denying services or raising rates) in a black neighbourhood also uphold predatory lending practices in white neighbourhoods. Defeating those systems means recognizing that they can be harmful to both.

A truly intersectional politics recognizes that systems of oppression – whether they be austerity measures that undercut education funding, or pipelines that cut across sacred burial grounds and threaten water security – often care little for individual identity. One of the trademarks of any oppressor, be they actual dictators or just horrible bosses, is that they identify an “Other” and don’t move much further, cognitively, than that. Once you are an Other, it doesn’t matter to the person who Othered you that you’re from Costa Rica, not Puerto Rico. The various nuances and dimensions of the Other’s identity get flattened into a projection of Otherness – and it is from this Otherness that social movements can build.

All social movements need the time to listen to each other, affirm their dignity, and see what their nuanced identities can contribute to each other. That means really taking the time to internalize past struggles, and learn from them. But at the same time, the present moment may call for new alliances. Politics, as they say, makes strange bedfellows. If anything good can come from this rise of nationalism, let it be a new understanding of intersectionality.

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